Tag: facebook marketing

Believe it or not, it doesn’t happen every day that Mark Zuckerberg himself calls your office to say ‘thank you’ for the delicious biscuits you had sent for his Beast (Mark’s Hungarian sheepdog).

Beast, Mark Zuckerberg's Hungarian sheep dog

Well, there you go, our exclusive opportunity to extend our love for biscuits, dogs and masala chai (chai is for us) to Timeline, apps and brands.

That is when Mark spilled the beans and told us about the Dislike button which will be rolled out as next set of features with the Timeline. Dislike button will adorn your profile picture for a day i.e. on the first day of April. This will be part of an innovation trail campaign to test new features by Facebook. Good news is that you can have a go at your friends’ pictures on a disliking spree. Now, isn’t that really cool and slightly wicked 😉

Well, all the best to Mark and special thanks to Beast for helping us to provide this scoop. 🙂 We promise to keep sending more biscuits for Beast. Of course, we would expect more such scoops in return.

If you’ve read so far, then you will surely want to share this and contribute to the global April Fools count 🙂

Facebook = Friends. However, all friends are not created equal; some by default are your favourite chat buddies, others the secret keepers, some come handy for hitchhiking to college or office, while others are life of your party. Based on this social phenomenon Facebook introduced Smart Lists in September last year, an easy way to segregate your friends as co-workers, college friends, relatives etc. This was to make sure you share only what is relevant to your friends in these lists.

Now, that you have done that, you probably want to keep updated more about a selected few of your friends and want to avoid others (e.g. some relatives or creepy friends). To help you do that Facebook recently revamped its ‘Acquaintances’ list, to add those friends from whom you would like to get fewer updates through the Acquaintance list suggestion manager.

Updates from your friends in the Acquaintances list will appear with much less frequency in your News Feed. You can also choose to selectively share your updates with friends minus the acquaintances. Those in this somewhat ignored list won’t be able to know of your intentions, so there won’t be any fear of some awkward confrontation later on. Plus, you don’t have to delete anyone anymore, just manage them the Facebook way

Yahoo recently filed a law suit against Facebook over patent infringement claiming that technology used by the social network actually belongs to the search engine. Gearing up to this law suit, Facebook has purchased 750 patents from IBM, this was reported by VentureBeat today. Though, no additional details were provided by Facebook spokesperson on the issue.

Yahoo had to face a lot of criticism as entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley veterans came in support of Facebook. According to popular perception the claims made by Yahoo aren’t substantial as same features and technology have been used by others as well.

Yahoo has claimed infringement on two privacy patents, four advertising patents, two customization patents, one messaging patent, and one social networking patent” according to the blog.

Is Facebook panicking by purchasing large number of patents from IBM? Difficult to say as the social networking behemoth has only 56 patents with 503 filed and pending. Moreover, Facebook probably wants to come clean before its IPO hits the market.

Facebook has expressed its disappointment on the hostile action taken by Yahoo and vowed to defend itself vigorously. Its spokesperson had earlier told media, “We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation… we will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”

Stagnation in world economies has taken marketing gurus by surprise and beyond doubt has dented consumer sentiment. However, the 840mn strong social network that is Facebook feels like fresh air for brands when you tell them that more than half of its users log in on a daily basis. Well, that’s not it when it comes to these users loving (read liking) brands on Facebook India has been doing much better compared to US.

This data was released by digital marketing research company eMarketer recently. When asked if users will follow or ‘like’ brands on Facebook, 24% Indians answered in affirmative. For US this was just 10%. For another question on whether social networking sites are a good source of word of mouth information on brand experiences, 27% Indians agreed followed by US with 18%

Overall social networking usage is gaining momentum in emerging markets like Brazil and China followed by India where users are more likely to engage with brands online. Experts have predicted that over half of total social media ad revenues in 2012 would come from outside the US, the study quoted.

All organizations, businesses or individuals are set to gain by this social boom irrespective of their revenue model or company size. So, don’t be left out and set up a page for yourself or your brand. To set up your Facebook page click here.

Still not sure how to get those fans on your side? We are always here to help.